Adam Beattie – Home Fires Burning Album Launch
Live at Stoke Newington Old Church
Featuring:
Fiona Bevan – vocals, double bass
Zac Gvirtzmann- bass clarinet
Sarah Beattie – violin
Filippo Ferazzoli – electric guitar
Adam Beattie – voice, guitars
Dave Hamblett – drums
Cameo vocals from Annie Beattie, Bob Beattie and Juno Beattie-Bevan
The Old Church has rarely felt as quietly arresting as it did that evening—its grandeur softened by an intimate sprawl of chairs, bodies, and anticipation. A fitting setting for Adam Beattie’s Home Fires Burning launch, where the sense of something both deeply personal and collectively familiar seemed to settle into every corner of the space. Central to that pull is Beattie’s voice itself—blues-inflected and resonant, a baritone that carries both weight and warmth, shifting effortlessly between something tender and close-held to moments of quiet, unguarded power.
From the moment Beattie and his band took to the stage, there was a palpable ease—an artist entirely at home with his audience, visibly moved, admitting simply, “I’m so happy to be here.” What followed over the next ninety minutes was not just a performance, but a careful unfolding. Opening with the title track, Beattie traced the origins of Home Fires Burning back to a moment of personal rupture—seeing his old school in Aberdeenshire demolished—transforming memory into something enduring. From there, the album revealed itself as a kind of linear journey ( to which Beattie drew inspiration from fellow songwriter Benjamin Sheuer), each song threading into the next, mapping a path from his native Scotland to London’s so-called “Silver City.”
At the heart of the evening was the interplay between Beattie and Fiona Bevan, whose harmonies carried a rare, intuitive precision. There is something unspoken in the way their voices meet—soft, intricate, yet unwavering—that became a defining texture of the night.
Tracks such as The Brother I Never Had and To All the Boys laid bare a striking emotional openness. In confronting themes of suppressed vulnerability within male identity, Beattie offered something both deeply personal and quietly political. The inclusion of his father’s voice—echoing through the church—collapsed generational distance into something resolved, something tender. Vulnerability, here, felt like an act of strength.
That notion of “home” expanded further through songs inspired by Beattie and Bevan’s daughter, Juno, whose recorded cameos threaded gently through the set. The addition of harp from Anna McLuckie in Golden Hour brought a luminous quality—moments that felt almost suspended, as though light itself had found a musical form. In Leave the Hall Light On, a reflection on family and care, Sarah Beattie’s violin carried a warmth that spoke as much as the lyrics themselves.
Up to this point, the set had been delicately restrained, the band held together with subtle precision by drummer Dave Hamblett. But a shift came with Girl from the Seaside Town and the crowd-favourite Glasgow Kiss, where rhythm and release took hold. Fiona Bevan, dancing behind the double bass, and Filippo Ferazzoli’s long-awaited guitar solo brought a welcome surge of energy—moments of levity and movement that balanced the evening’s emotional weight.
The emotional apex arrived with Rainy Morning Late November, as Beattie recounted the loss of his cousin—the brother he never had. Here, the performance shed all restraint. Repeating the line, “you died just because,” his tears broke through his voice like, the glass ceiling finally coming down with ricochets of grief , and the room seemed to hold its breath. It was a rare and disarming moment—grief, unfiltered—reminding us that for some artists, music is not performance, but extension.
From there, Big Bad World pushed into darker, more outward-looking terrain, before the closing track, Silver City, brought the journey full circle. As the audience began to move—some dancing, some simply swaying—it became clear that this was more than a narrative about place. It was about carrying something with you: that sense of home, of memory, of fire.
And perhaps that’s the quiet revelation at the centre of Home Fires Burning: that the places we long for are not always fixed, but something we carry—flickering, persistent—wherever we go.
Adam Beattie is now touring the UK with Home Fires Burning alongside Fiona Bevan — full dates can be found at: https://www.adambeattie.com/
